This invention relates to a method of and device for acquiring information on the traffic line of persons to grasp the situation where persons are moving around facilities, such as traffic-line information to grasp the routes of customers moving around a store, such as a department store or a supermarket.
Jpn. Pat. Appln. KOKAI Publication No. 7-23452 has disclosed a system for acquiring data on the traffic line of persons. In the system, which uses radio transmitting/receiving devices, transmission means for periodically transmitting location data on their installation locations are provided in positions that prevent the transmitting regions from overlapping with each other. The position data from each transmission means is received by reception means. The reception means memorizes the position data and the time when the position data was received. The position data and time data the reception means has memorized are acquired by data acquisition means. The data acquisition means determines a traffic line by causing data analyzing means to analyze the acquired position data and time data. Specifically, providing reception means for a moving body enables the reception means to receive the position data from the transmission means each time the moving body enters the transmitting area of the transmission means and memorize the position data and time data. This makes it possible to grasp when and where the moving body has passed and acquire data on the traffic line of the moving body.
When such a traffic-line data acquiring system is applied to the acquisition of information on the movement of customers in a large store, the reception means are not easy to use, because customers have to carry the means with them or put the means on the carts or their shopping baskets. In addition, since the reception means are separated from each other, when the data acquisition means acquires the position data and time data stored in each reception means, the efficiency of data acquisition is low, because the acquisition means has to connect to each reception means and acquire those data items.
A first object of the present invention is to provide a method of and device for automatically acquiring information on the traffic line of persons efficiently without imposing any burden on persons, such as customers.
A second object of the present invention is to provide a method of and device for automatically acquiring information on the traffic line of persons by attribute.
A third object of the present invention is to provide a method of and device for automatically acquiring not only information on the traffic line of persons but also visit patterns, including the frequency of visits of persons and their visit time.
A fourth object of the present invention is to provide a method of and device for automatically acquiring not only information on the traffic line of persons but also information on the traffic line at the time when persons visited in the past.
A fifth object of the present invention is to provide a method of and device for automatically acquiring not only information on the traffic line of persons but also information on the traffic line of persons by attribute and the past visit pattern of persons by attribute.
A sixth object of the present invention is to provide a method of and device for automatically acquiring not only information on the traffic line of persons but also information on the traffic line of persons by attribute, the past visit pattern of persons by attribute, and the past traffic line by attribute.
A seventh object of the present invention is to provide a method of and device for acquiring information on the traffic line of persons which assure a high discrimination rate of persons.
An eighth object of the present invention is to provide a method of and device for acquiring information on the traffic line of persons which speed up collation and reduce the storage capacity.
In order to achieve the above objects, according to one aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method of acquiring information on the traffic line of persons representing the routes that the persons take, comprising the steps of: sensing the existence of a person and extracting the person""s image from the images picked up by image pickup devices which are provided in facilities and pick up persons entering, leaving, and moving around the facilities; creating a feature vector unique to the person by subjecting the person""s image extracted in the person""s image extracting step to an image process; adding information including the identification code and entrance time of the person to the feature vector created from the person""s image picked up at the time of entrance to create entrance information and storing the entrance information; collating the feature vector created from the image of the person leaving and moving around the facilities with the feature vector contained in the entrance information; storing traffic-line information including the identification code of the person, pickup time, and pickup place, when the same person is discriminated in the collating step; and acquiring traffic-line information with the same identification code from the traffic-line information stored in the traffic-line information storing step and providing the route of each person moving around the facilities.
Since the entrance, exit, and movement in facilities of a person are all picked up by the image pickup devices, the identification code is added to the person""s image picked up, and pieces of information with the same identification code are totalized to produce the traffic line of the customer, information on the traffic line of the customer can be automatically acquired efficiently without imposing any burden on the customer.
The person""s image extracting step is to extract only the person""s face image and the feature vector creating step is to create lower-dimensional vectors by principal component analysis. Consequently, the discrimination rate of persons is increased, the collation is effected at higher speed, and the storage capacity is reduced.
The method of the invention further comprises the step of collating the feature vector created from the person""s image picked up at the time of entrance with the feature vectors by attribute for persons previously stored and judging the attribute of the person, wherein the step of storing the entrance information includes the step of storing entrance information including the attribute of the person, and the step of providing the routes includes the step of providing the routes by attribute. Therefore, information on the traffic line of person""s attributes, including sex and age group, is also acquired automatically.
The method of the invention further comprises the step of providing a visit pattern including tendency data on the frequency of visits and visit time of the same person by using past visit information.
The method of the invention further comprises the step of preserving past traffic-line information obtained by adding a visit date to the traffic-line information, wherein the step of acquiring the traffic-line information includes the step of referring to the past traffic-line information and providing the past route of each of the persons moving around the facilities. This makes it possible to automatically acquire the traffic-line information at the time when the person visited the facilities.
The method of the invention further comprises the step of collating the feature vector created from the person""s image picked up at the time of entrance with the feature vectors by attribute for persons previously stored and judging the attribute of the person, the step of preserving past visit information obtained by adding the attribute of the person and the visit date to the entrance information, and the step of collating the feature vector created from the person""s image picked up at the time of entrance with the feature vectors included in the past visit information, wherein the step of storing the entrance information includes the step of storing entrance information including the past visit date and preceding identification code of the person, when the same person has been identified in the past visit information collating step. This makes it possible to automatically acquire past visit patterns by attribute for persons.
The method of the invention further comprises the step of preserving past traffic-line information obtained by adding a visit date to the traffic-line information, wherein the step of acquiring the traffic-line information includes the step of referring to the past traffic-line information and past visit information and providing the past route by the attribute of each of the persons moving around the facilities. This makes it possible to automatically acquire past traffic-line information by attribute for persons.
Furthermore, the present invention provides a traffic-line information acquiring device using the above methods. According to still another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a device for acquiring information on the traffic line of persons representing the routes that the persons take, comprising: image pickup means which are provided in facilities and pick up persons entering, leaving, and moving around the facilities; means for sensing the existence of a person from the images picked up by the image pickup means and extracting the person""s image; means for creating a feature vector unique to the person by subjecting the person""s image extracted by the person""s image extracting means to an image process; means for adding information including the identification code and visit time of the person to the feature vector created from the person""s image picked up at the time of entrance to create entrance information and storing the entrance information; means for collating the feature vector created from the image of the person leaving and moving around the facilities with the feature vector contained in the entrance information; means for storing traffic-line information including the identification code, pickup time, and pickup place of the person, when the same person is discriminated by the collating means; and means for acquiring traffic-line information with the same identification code from the traffic-line information stored by the traffic-line information storing means and providing the route of each person moving around the facilities.
Additional objects and advantages of the invention will be set forth in the description which follows, and in part will be obvious from the description, or may be learned by practice of the invention. The objects and advantages of the invention may be realized and obtained by means of the instrumentalities and combinations particularly pointed out hereinafter.